Opposition to IFRS among U.S. CFOs

While recent surveys have shown support for IFRS among financial executives, a recent Grant Thornton survey Forty percent of U.S. CFOs and senior comptrollers do not believe U.S. companies should be required to useIFRS.

Thirty-nine percent of the 846 senior financial executives surveyed said that U.S. companies should start using IFRS in three to five years, and only 7 percent believe that U.S. companies should be required to start using IFRS immediately.

When asked about their own companies’ actual IFRS usage, 90 percent of the senior executives surveyed reported that their companies do not prepare financial statements according to IFRS. Only 15 percent of the senior execs at public companies said they use IFRS and only 8 percent from private companies said they do.

Thirty-nine percent said they are familiar with the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s project on financial statement presentation. The majority of those that say they are familiar with the project say it is either “beneficial, but the benefits to the users of our financial statements would not justify the costs of implementing the proposed format” (49 percent) or that it “would not be beneficial to the users of our financial statements” (30 percent).

When asked if there should be different recognition and measurement principles for public entities and nonpublic entities, 51 percent of the senior financial executives said yes (including 39 percent from public companies and 56 percent from private companies), while 41 percent said no (including 54 percent from public companies and 37 percent from private companies).

Asked whether nonpublic entities should be allowed to use simpler recognition and measurement principles when preparing financial statements, 60 percent of the senior financial executives said yes (including 42 percent from public companies and 66 percent from private companies), and 34 percent said no (including 51 percent from public companies and 29 percent from private companies).

When asked if nonpublic entities in the U.S. should be allowed to use IFRS for SMEs, or small and midsized enterprises, when preparing financial statements, 52 percent said yes and 20 percent said no.